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PhilGoetz comments on Bayesians vs. Barbarians - Less Wrong
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Good post.
Also, historically, evil barbarians regularly fall prey to some irrational doctrine or personal paranoia that wastes their resources (sacrifice to the gods, kill all your Jews, kill everybody in the Ukraine, have a cultural revolution).
We in the US probably have a peculiar attitude on the rationality of war because we've never, with the possible exception of the War of 1812, fought in a war that was very rational (in terms of the benefits for us). The Revolutionary war? The war with Mexico? The Civil War? The Spanish-American War? WWI? WWII? Korea? Vietnam? Iraq? None of them make sense in terms of self-interest.
(Disclaimer: I'm a little drunk at the moment.)
We stole an awful lot of land by fighting with the American Indians.
I'm not going to dispute the others, but I kind of had the impression that we did pretty well out of the Mexican and Spanish-American wars; I mean, Texas's oil alone would seem to've paid for the (minimal) costs of those two, right?
In terms of national self-interest, yes. But they weren't causes that I'd personally risk death for.
I'm being inconsistent; I'm using the "national interest" standard for WW2, and the "personal interests" standard for these wars.
Well presumably most people don't actually risk their lives for the cause. They risk their lives for the prestige, power, money, or whatever. Fighting in a war is a good (but risky) way to gain respect and influence. Also there are social costs to avoiding the fight.
So I should try to be irrational when I'm drunk?
Well sure. Otherwise you're just wasting the alcohol!
Consider (think WITH this idea for a while. There will be plenty of time to refute it later. I find that, if I START with, "That's so wrong!", I <b>really</b> weaken my ability to "pan for the gold".)
Consider that you are using "we" and "self" as a pointer that jumps from one set to another moment by moment. Here is a list of some sets that may be confounded together here, see how many others you can think of. These United States (see the Constitution)
the people residing in that set
citizens who vote
citizens with a peculiar attitude
the President
Congress
organizations (corporations, NGOs, political parties, movements, e-communities, etc.)
the wealthy and powerful
the particular wealthy and powerful who see an opportunity to benefit from an invasion
Multiple Edits: trying to get this site to respect line/ paragraph breaks, formatting. Does this thing have any formatting codes?
There's a "Help" link below / next to the comment box, and it respects much of the MarkDown standard. To put a single line break at the end of the line, just end the line with two spaces. Paragraph breaks are created by a blank line in-between lines of text.